Trials
by emprawr
Summary: Short One-Shot Detailing one of many trials that saw to his rise to power


Prologue: Trials

Breath came ragged, harsh as he leaned heavily of the roughhewn stone wall, darkness and shadows stretched around him for eternities in either direction, a circle of light spilling from his wand his only salvation. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face as he strained his senses to their peak trying to hear, smell, feel the thing that hunted him in these tunnels. Faintly, he heard a noise, a noise that steadily grew. A slow soft sibilant hiss that soon turned into a thunderous slithering. The noises filled the cavern as the beast bore down on him, the sweat and dirt caking his body leaving a shining neon trail leading to him. Like a beacon to the senses of the creature. He gripped the only things that were keeping him alive in this god forsaken place. His wand and his glasses, round splintered lenses held in wire framing, beaten but not yet defeated. The reflection still shown fractured though it was, what awaited him around the next corner.  
" _I can smell you... I can smell your stench of fear in the air_ ", came a whisper  
the wood of his wand creaked slightly as his grip tighter around it, his breath quickened and adrenaline surged through his veins as he prepared his next move. The thunder of scales against rough stone grew and grew until it was deafening  
" _And soon...I WILL TASTE YOUR BLOOD_ " With a roar the wall beside him trembled and broke before the weight of the gigantic mythical beast as it flew at him, the great heaving bulk belying the speed at which it could strike, but he was already off, streaking down and around corners taking sharp turns trying to throw off his serpentine pursuer. Flashes of light flew over his shoulder without so much as an uttered word or glance behind him to make sure his spells struck their target. An enraged bestial roar shook the very earth and stalactites crumbled and fell from the cavern he has rushed into. A bone piercing curse had ripped through the beasts left eye. Red and white pieces of viscera and, too dark, red blood flowed freely drop of which flew through the cavern and hissed when it touched the stone.  
In a whorl of pain and rage the beast roared in its agony  
"... _Rip! Kill! Destroy!_ "  
He jumped and rolled, dodging jagged pieces of fallen rock and the rain of acidic blood. In a single moment he took in the space to which he fled. Enormous pools of water scattered between walkways and large clearings of uneven chaotic stone, the earth frequently pieced by stalagmites, like fingers grasping at an empty sky for looking down at them was a forest of hanging stone. Quietly waiting and looking as if any moment they might fall and bring you your death.  
The creatures thrashing has cleared a swath of the jagged uneven rock formation, rolling until it has fallen into and submerged itself in one of the crystal clear pools of water. The great coiling snake spun and twisted in the water, so much so that the surface of the lake seemed to boil, hundreds of meter of muscle scales and death preparing to leap from the water and crush him beneath its coils of in its jaws. Before he could think the snake rose from the water flying towards him. On reflex he pointed his wand and screamed the first words that flew to his mind. Desperation and Fear lending explosive power to his magic.  
" _FULGURIS MAXIMA!_ "  
The resulting thundering roar from the spell created an expanding sonic wave, flattening and pulverizing everything outwards as it traveled. A concentrated beam of pure lightning streamed from his wand branching erratically but never straying from its target. Blue and white filled his vision and the lightning filled his vision and it was all he could do to grip his wand and direct his magic forward. A wrenching otherworldly scream tore its way out of the creature, its roars turned into wails of agony and terror. And until those too died out he never let the spell fade.  
In the aftermath he lay panting, exhausted by the body of the Basilisk, for that was what it was. The giant snake of myth that could kill with a gaze. Surges of lighting still crackled over the carcass and the pools of water in the cavern.  
Before exhaustion claimed him he uttered the one word that perfectly summed up the 2 days he had spent underneath the cavers.  
"Fuck."


End file.
